I thought I'd just mention incidents i've encountered in a recent thread to highlight a couple points not covered in the list ...

Curiously, I think you are missing the point of the thread.

The purpose of this thread is not to list bad behavior, per se, but to learn how to avoid bad behavior, especially dishonest behavior. I'm more interested in how you see your behavior, than the behavior of others.

The "list" you seem to be refering to is the glossary of terms.

Ad Hominem attacks ...

Are just a logical fallacy, usually the last resort for a failed argument, or where cognitive dissonance is cutting too close to the bone.

Claiming to have linkable specific evidence ...

As in my opening post here? This occurs frequently, and is only necessary to track down if it is essential to the argument.

So when you read the posts of people, do you try to understand the POV of the argument?

Suppose we have the following scenario. I've been in and out of the prison system all my life. The last time I went in was for child molestation. Through my psych exam, the shrink determined that I was attracted to young boys.

Nowadays, I'm out and about and is proposing to marry your sister. She happens to have a young boy and she has no idea about my past history. From the beginning, you've had a bad feeling about me. You tell your sister about me. You even point out to your sister that I keep making her cry and she keeps saying "I need to learn to love him more..."

When all else fails, you decide to tell your sister about my criminal past history.

But WAIT! Ad Hominem... I might argue with you that my past has nothing to do with wanting to marry your sister.

The purpose of this thread is not to list bad behavior, per se, but to learn how to avoid bad behavior, especially dishonest behavior. I'm more interested in how you see your behavior, than the behavior of others.

Thanks, noted. It's more about self-awareness about our own biases, and ensuring we treat others in an ethical way in debates.

Ad Hominem attacks ...

Are just a logical fallacy, usually the last resort for a failed argument, or where cognitive dissonance is cutting too close to the bone.

Would you see the specific forms of the fallacies, as symptoms, and the glossary in the first post here as the underlying causes or diagnosis ? I now notice that my second complaint could be characterised by misrepresentation combined with an appeal to authority (appealing to the authority of an inaccessible/unknowable source).

(BTW i am about to jump on a train and where I am heading I do not have internet access, so thx everyone for enlivening my holiday period! just letting you know I may not be able to respond! )

Working with the key points in an overall argument is fine, but far too many of these posts attempt to respond to all arguments, consequential or not. Often at some length. The responses to those posts can be even worse.

This is not the best format for such a debate style.

Point made. The problem is with off-topic branching, and how to deal with that. Some people don't take failure to respond or a comment that it is off-topic as an answer and will continue to hound for one. It also has something to do with completeness.

I read mostly in order to refute. The reason I do this is that intellectually I fully accept evolution but struggle with full emotional acceptance - and refuting arguments against evolution (particularly ones I haven't thought about before) helps me clarify the evidence in my own mind. I'm aiming to achieve internal alignment on this issue - and it's slowly working.

I certainly don't feel like "my side" of the debate is being particularly open-minded. We, in fact, sometimes act rather conspiratorial in our blatant disregard for the errors made by members of "our own side." Mr Jack comes to mind as one of the few from either side who consistently points out errors made by his own side of the debate.

Hard feeling? no, just trying to maintain focus on the topic, and taking a little hint from Coyote.

It wasn't meant as a refutation.

I didn't think it was, just that it was an example of behavior, rather than a discussion about whether it is valid behavior for forum debates. Kind of a cross purposes to the topic.

It seems most people are missing the mark here. The topic is about how to best address other people when making a reply:

Do you try to fully understand their position and then see if it needs tweaking?

Or do you whiz through it looking for obvious errors and then harp on those while ignoring the rest of the post?

(obviously these are extremes in a spectrum of possibilities)

I'm trying to contrast different approaches we see to find ways to improve my posting habits, and perhaps influence others.

Take Modulus as an example - rarely gets emotional or behaves as an attack dog, but tries to reason with people to come to some common understanding (one of the reasons he is one of the best posters here).

I think if one want's to honestly talk about someone else's position they have to understand it first.

Now, rather obviously, nobody is going to come out and say that they think their manner of posting is dishonest or inappropriate, however some may see ways they can improve.

Do you try to fully understand their position and then see if it needs tweaking?

Or do you whiz through it looking for obvious errors and then harp on those while ignoring the rest of the post?

Most of the time, neither. I'm usually exhausted when I get home from work. I really don't have the time to read carefully through more than a couple threads. Which is why I tend to limit my participation to a couple threads at a time.

And even then, when I read a post, I whiz over it and then move on to the next post... unless something catches my eyes. Now, let's admit it, there are so many members with so much free time here that by the time anything so wacked up needs a rebuttal, by the time I get to it a dozen people have already responded to it. And have I mentioned I've been living on 5 hours of sleep per day?

What I usually do is a combination of whizzing through a post and if something jumps out at me I'll go back and reread the whole thing again in more detail.

And I agree. Mod seems to be very careful, articulate, patient, and {insert ideal characteristic here}.

Edit.

PS - I just caught myself falling asleep as i waited for this post to submit.

I read mostly in order to refute. ...... and refuting arguments against evolution (...) helps me clarify the evidence in my own mind.

I'm not sure how that works, can you give me an example?

I usually start with trying to understand, but in a lengthy debate with an obdurate poster (example: Archangel in EVOLUTION'S FRAUD HAS CONTRIBUTED TO ITS PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE:), I can switch to reading to refute, taking points that are false and showing the evidence that falsifies the points made. Admin tried to focus on just one item in the list, and several (Granny Magda the most) tried to get Archangel to expand on his position, but it ended with impasse.

I read mostly in order to refute. ...... and refuting arguments against evolution (...) helps me clarify the evidence in my own mind.

I'm not sure how that works, can you give me an example?

Hi RAZD,

as an example, I was discussing the origin of whales in EvolutionFairytale with someone alleging that evolutionists could produce no facts in support of whale evolution - that all was mere assumption and supposition. So I researched some of the facts, and put a reply together.

I learned something about whale evolution. But also I made a connection in my own brain between two lines of evidence that supported each other in a way I hadn't previously seen.

These were the fossil record and genetic studies. Both of these, as I think you know, point to the origin of whales from a common ancestor with ungulates 55mya.

Normally of course, creationists are able to make the point that genetics and fossils align because the morphology of species is obviously aligned with their genetics - so under creation, we should also expect morphology and genetics to line up. Similar looking species will have similar genetics.

But with whales, the morphology of whales is radically different from that of the common ancestor. We should NOT therefore expect the a creator would give them similar genetics to ungulates. But this is what we actually find. The fossil record and the genetics line up in this unexpected way.

So for me, this was an 'Aha' moment - this is really good evidence in favour of ToE and against creation and helped increase my emotional belief in ToE.